1. Field of Invention
Embodiments exemplarily described herein relate generally to semiconductor devices and, more particularly, to semiconductor devices capable of preventing a repair failure.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, semiconductor devices are manufactured through a fabrication (FAB) process in which circuit patterns are repeatedly formed on substrates to form cells having integrated circuits, and an assembly process in which the substrates having the cells are packaged to form chips. Furthermore, an electrical die sorting (EDS) process is conducted between the fabrication process and the assembly process to inspect electrical properties of the cells formed on the substrate.
Inferior cells may be sorted out during the inspection process when electrical properties of the cells are examined. Since the sorted inferior cells are replaced by redundant cells that have been manufactured using a repair process, chips perform to requirements, and thus it is possible to improve the yield of a semiconductor device.
During a typical repair process, a laser beam is irradiated to a wire connected to the inferior cell in order to break the wire. The broken wire is called a fuse and a region where fuses are clustered together is called a fuse region. The fuse region may be formed at the same time that a word line or a bit line is formed in the cell region of the semiconductor device. However, in accordance with an increase in the integration density of the semiconductor device, if the fuse is formed in the word line or the bit line which is positioned at a relatively lower part of the semiconductor device, an etching depth is increased during a fuse open process. Accordingly, it has been recently proposed to use a metal wire or a conductive layer for electrodes of a capacitor, which is positioned at a relatively upper part of the semiconductor device, as a fuse.
Fuses may be of a linear-type or curved-type, depending on their shape. Curved-type fuses have a smaller area for the same pitch. Hence, the curved-type fuse is more frequently used than the linear-type fuse. However, when a curved-type fuse is divided into a cutting region and a non-cutting region, fuse fragments (i.e., portions of the fuse which are removed from the cutting region) may be dispersed onto non-cutting regions of other fuses within the fuse region. As a result, adjacent fuses may become electrically shorted together in the non-cutting regions thereof. Therefore, malfunction of the semiconductor device may occur, and the yield of semiconductor device may be reduced.